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“….and you can go to the police station and beat them up.”
My wandering mind snapped to attention when I heard that statement from Blaire during sharing time. I had not even heard the beginning of the sentence, but I realized immediately that Blaire was talking about one of the electronic games he plays at home, a typical “share” these days among the six-year-olds in my class.
“But if one of the hard chicks tries to get in your car, you don’t let them.” Blaire continued.
“What?! Did you say ‘hard chicks’?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, but you can kick them out and they won’t sex you!” he explained.
The s-e-x word brought a deep silence. Uh oh, taboo. The little ones sat cross-legged on the carpet at my feet, and their eyes shot glances back and forth between Blaire and me. What would happen?
“What’s the matter with you guys?” I deadpanned, “Don’t you watch cartoons? Don’t you spend too much time watching TV like kids are supposed to?”
Now, fourth graders would have caught my sarcasm and thought it was funny, but my little pre-first critters took my question earnestly and began to answer in mass, which was no surprise. Whenever you ask a group of kids this age an open-ended question, they will all begin to blurt out at the same time.
So what I heard were snatches of this and that, “Game Boy…..better than Rug Rats….Play Station….karate chop….you have to get to level five and kill the……my brother has…..if he let’s me play….I’m getting X-Box for Christmas…True Crime is cool and you can….Medal of Honor, Mr. Hare….”
Everyone was calling out at once. It was pandemonium. It is plain that TV and music are blasé. Interactive is in.
What I found out with a little questioning is that parents either don’t realize (or don’t care) the stuff kids are being exposed to, or they don’t realize their kids are playing their older brother’s game or going next door where there is no supervision.
How do these kids’ minds process what they are seeing and doing in these games? Sometimes kids seem so bright, so hip, we give them too much credit for understanding. I have parents who treat their kids as peers, but that is another story. Are you one who thinks they are just little adults? Consider what Blaire asked me later that day.
He stood before me holding up an acorn between his thumb and forefinger. “Mr. Hare, is there a squirrel inside here?”
Later he brought up a drawing to me. I had asked the class to make a drawing and then put a word on the paper to go with it. “How do you spell night (knight), Mr. Hare?” he asked.
I looked at the drawing and thought it might be a castle, but I wasn’t sure if he meant knight or night, so I asked, “You mean like a knight who is in a castle?”
“No, Mr. Hare, like a knight who rides on a horse!”
This is the same boy, remember, who goes home and beats up cops and kicks “hard chicks” out of his car, and is a confidant for his mommy, someone to listen to her relationship problems! And he still thinks Santa is coming!!
How does the world fit into children like that? How do you fit the ABC's into kids like that? Is this unique, or just a variation of the generations theme?
In Reply to: Acorns and Castles posted by Jim H. [385.4] on December 04, 2003 at 08:31:11:
Yowsa Broji, you touched on a real, sobering piece of my daily life. I don't get to see it from the same perspective you do. I get the mom's-eye view. My own kids are slaves to the medium, fer sure, dude, but they have limits (which to my surprise they've set for themselves; perhaps because they know they're trusted??? I really don't know) and they know it's fantasy, and that fantasy is a marvelous thing. It's a few of their friends I feel the abyss of cyber-Scylla and cyber-Charybdis looming for. Anger and fear, multiplied exponentially by the number of cognitively disconnecting games that a mind too young can't process yet, divided by the square rootlessness of sitting glued to the screen for mega-hours at a stretch. One little guy Mikael comes to mind in particular. He's a lost soul at nine. Not in any moralistic sense; it's just that the abyss has swallowed him already. He's sitting proof of the paradox of the innocence of belief in regeneration of severed limbs combined with "trust no one." Sorry to go off like that. You touched a deeply resonant chord, bro.
In Reply to: Acorns and Castles posted by Jim H. [385.4] on December 04, 2003 at 08:31:11:
I was talking to a tiny relative (age 6) a few years back. He told me his favorite game was 'absolute carnage'- he had no older siblings- his mom bought 'absolute carnage' for him.
I buy my kids less 'mature' games, but I watched them try out a smash bros. game on the sample machine at Best Buy. There was a little girl blonde character- could've been goldilocks, for all I know- who kept hitting and being hit by other characters whom I took to be male. I had to wonder if this contributes to all the domestic violence we hear of. When I grew up, males hitting females was simply taboo-is equality interpreted as hitting each other, male or female?
In another sample game, Sonic was rolling down the middle of a busy street-it seemed like a stupid example to set-couldn't he do his thing on the sidewalk?
Anyway, my kids have tried the new systems in the store and find the games boring- they prefer the older systems, for which we've avoided the 'teen' and 'mature' games in favor of pac-man, mario bros, zelda, super-heroes, and pokemon.They also say the graphics are better on some of their older systems than on the new- I'm not sure why that would be.
In Reply to: Acorns and Castles posted by Jim H. [385.4] on December 04, 2003 at 08:31:11:
Hi Jim,
I liked your thought provocing story as usual. I think what's happening to the children is a reflection of what's happening to the adults in our society -- intense competition, excessive materialism, instant gratification, feelings of emptiness and void, violence, quick cheap thrills, and such a manic lifestyle that the founding puritans of our country would be agast. If that's what's happening to the adults, how could the children not be affected?
In my perfect imaginary world children would live a simple life with lots of exposure to the outdoors and animals. They would make things by hand and read a lot. They would learn the value of earning money early but in simple ways.
They would experience the arts by going to concerts and plays and museums that were appropriate for them. They would learn the value of discipline, charitable behavior, and social tolerance.
Unfortunately, it's kind of difficult to create such a world when the rest of it is so encroaching, but one can hope...I guess it's your role in this world to add back those pieces which are missing from children's lives such as wisdom, humanity, imagination, and tolerance.
In Reply to: Re: Acorns and Castles posted by gabriella [180.59] on December 04, 2003 at 14:23:01:
NMI
In Reply to: Acorns and Castles posted by Jim H. [385.4] on December 04, 2003 at 08:31:11:
Thanks, Jim.
Wonderful as usual!
Namaste`
Walt
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